Is this a relation to the famous warrior? Not Navajo then? Its a symbol: G in an arrow, as well as the name GERONIMO spelled out in this enormously beautiful ring.
Also, since its such a big sample, can anyone ID the type of turquoise?
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Sarah,
I believe “Geronimo” is the shop mark… I will do some research and see if I can find another similar example. Also, I believe Jason replied to a separate thread in which he explains in detail the Geronimo shop mark. Try searching the forum for “Geronimo.”
EDIT: Here is a link to a different thread on Turquoise People in which Jason describes some details about the Geronimo mark. P.S. that is a beautiful rock right there!!!
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More questions arise, thank you for your trouble…
The Geronimo a shop mark, do you mean a shop as in a silversmith studio or a store? Would it be Apache as the name suggests? Is the shop mark just the name Geronimo or is it always associated with the arrow G? Hard to do searches since what you get are alot of photos of the man.
Still wondering about the mine the turquoise is from.
Actually, in this case, I believe Geronimo was a trading post located in Arizona that is still active today. The shop mark is associated with the Geronimo Stamp and the letter G with an arrow strike through.
When a piece has a shop mark it is hard to identify which specific artist did the work, and in many cases, it is a collaborative effort – one person does the silversmithing, one does stone setting, another inlays etc. Collector’s Weekly, a prominent antique collectors magazine, had this to say about shop marks:
“…There were probably more artists working on their own than working for shops. For the artists, there were advantages to each approach. If you were a silversmith working for a shop, you had a steady income pretty much guaranteed. Whereas if you were working on your own, you had to make the jewelry and then you had to go out and find someone to buy it, which took away from your time…”
Essentially, the way I understood it, meant that a jewery maker was either commissioned by a shop or trading posts; the jeweler would sell their jewelry to the shop, and then the shop would mark up the price, put their hallmark on it and resell it. Sometimes, the shop could supply the stones and materials needed to make jewelry, and the jeweler would make jewelry for the shop, and the jeweler would be paid on a regular basis.
Also, It doesn’t necessarily mean your ring is Apache. To summarize, Geronimo is the name of the shop/trading post who at one point would have sold this ring. As for the stone, it looks like it could be Kingman (which would make sense, since Geronimo is located in Arizona). Try searching for Kingman water web turquoise for similiar examples.
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